MUMBAI: Satellite operator Eutelsat has reported revenues for the third quarter ended 31 March 2006.
For the three months ended 31 March 2006, revenues rose to 195.1 million euros from 190.8 million euros in the same period last year representing a rise of 2.2 per cent. For nine months it rose to 590 million euros from 561.9 million euros representing a rise of five per cent.
Eutelsat CEO Giuliano Berretta said, “We are very satisfied with the continuing solid commercial progress of the Group across our core
activities of video, data and value-added services in Western Europe and emerging markets in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as the higher than expected revenues generated from multi-usage leases.
"As a consequence of the good performance over the first nine months, and the comfort given by the successful launch on 11 March of our Hot Bird 7A broadcast satellite for our premium video neighbourhood, we are in a position to raise our revenue growth guidance from 2.5 per cent to more than 3.5 per cent for the fiscal year 2006.”
During the third quarter, Eutelsat says that there was a healthy demand for video applications as well as for data and value added services. Video applications revenue was up 3.9 per cent year-over-year. This was mainly driven by lease of capacity for the XX Winter Olympic Games, including for the European Broadcasting Union and NHK, and contract wins, notably for NTV Plus in Russia.
Data and value added services revenue grew 5.8% year-over-year led by continuous growth in value added services (+33.9 per cent at 7.5 million euros). This was principally driven by the roll-out of the D-Star broadband service for schools, regional administrations and enterprises beyond access to terrestrial broadband networks, despite delay in take-up resulting from the technical incident experienced by the W1 satellite in August 2005.
Multi-usage leases rose 27.9 per cent year-over-year due to a high renewal rate of contracts for government services during the quarter and favourable US$/Euro exchange rates compared to the same quarter last year.
Eutelsat has raised its revenue growth objective for fiscal year 2005-2006 from 2.5 per cent to more than 3.5 per cent.
